What's New?

If there’s one thing that I appreciate about the younger generation, it’s their approach to work. I find that they’re far less willing to tolerate fake hierarchies than previous generations. These kids seem fully aware that none of the crap they’re doing matters in the way corporate trash people try to portray it. I think our society would be a better place if we stopped putting rich assholes on a pedestal and these kids are well on their way to making it so.

I’ve worked for the same company for nine years. The last two years in particular have been fascinating. In my industry, you need to be a massive fuck up in order break anything. By that I mean, even the most incompetent management team can still succeed. The business doesn’t run itself, but the product being provided never loses demand. The product is intangible and it’s sole purpose is to manipulate people into spending money.

You don’t even need to be that smart because everything is set up for you. People make business deals with each other and share in the profits. The one weak link in this chain is where I come in. At least, that’s what I thought. The truth is, you don’t need to be particularly bright to do my job either. Basic pattern recognition skills and the ability to follow directions will get you 90% of the way. Based on forum posts and e-mails I’ve read from others in my field, literacy is optional.

Even this business has a breaking point, though. You can’t dip so low into the abyss that you lose track of what the business is, lest you break it’s appeal. I feel like my company is on the cusp of that. If that were all that were wrong, I wouldn’t care. I’ve never cared whether or not the place was truly successful because I get paid regardless. I have no interest in their bids at expansion because I know they’re going to fail. Failure at expansion doesn’t mean failure to exist. Unless someone screws up royal, there’s no economic risk to working there. I can use the place as a buffer from wider economic turmoil for as long as I want and because I’m good at what I do, they’re not going to question it.

Yet, here I am questioning things. I don’t care much for the business itself and I have no love for the people I work with aside from an exclusive few. If you’re reading this, you know who you are. The place has generally done right by me, but the last two years have been a train wreck. When you’re employing people who barely know how to read and write to do a job that primarily consists of both, what are you actually doing? I don’t have to ask too much, because I already know it’s nepotism. This person is bad at nearly everything they do, and it’s annoying to clean up. That’s not to say I don’t like the person. They’re actually very kind. They’re just horribly suited for a position that was invented solely for them.

My primary love falls upon the job itself. I like my job, and what I do. I love how close to home it is. What I don’t like is when HR signs my wife up for insurance using the wrong birthday despite myself having signed her up using the correct one.. I also don’t like being constantly interrupted due to under staffing. I don’t like doing other peoples jobs because they’re either not there, or don’t know how. I don’t like being told I’m going to get a promotion and it never materializing. I certainly don’t like working ten days straight while my daughter struggles in school and wife recovers from surgery. I don't like receiving conflicting directions or having to work around being set up to fail. I know how to succeed at tasks well enough that it’s easy to disregard the poor directions and get the results they want anyway. You want 400 orders to be created over a busy weekend? I can do that, but it’s not going to be the way you’re doing it. I don’t like being called while I’m off the clock to answer questions about how I did someone else’s job better than they could.

For the most part, I’ve avoided management positions because I think working for salary is a scam. I don’t want to be bothered when I’m off the clock either. I’m regularly bothered off the clock anyway, but I’m not obligated to play along. They can try to call me in, but the answer is always “no” unless I respect the person asking. I don’t care about corporate hierarchies either, so it doesn’t matter to me what my official position is. I don’t want to be robbed, and I don’t want to be bothered. It’s that simple. Those that internalize these hierarchies tend to ask why I don’t move “ahead”. What exactly is “ahead” in your mind? The higher you climb a ladder, the more it hurts if you fall off. If there was something valuable at the top of that ladder, fine. There isn’t, though. Extra money isn’t going to solve my problems or validate me in any way. I spent three years of my childhood pissing in a PVC tube because the plywood shack my dad build for my brother and I to live in didn’t have plumbing. The fact that I live in a house with my beautiful wife and children to share it with are all I need or care about.

As long as I’m alive, I need to focus on making the world better for people I care about. That’s my only goal in life. I don’t want my kids remembering me as some guy who comes home late at night and barely sees them. And frankly, I don’t have the bandwidth to waste on useless crap. I don’t own that company, so why should I give my life to it? Can I take a title with me when I die? Of course not. When I die some day, I want to be remembered for all the good I did. The biggest waste of all would be if I was remembered for spending to much time devoting my life to something pointless.

What have I actually done with my life? I won’t tell you beyond what you can infer, but none of it revolves around my job. The job helped me get there, but it’s simply business. If it wasn’t them, it’d be someone else. The same can’t be said in the reverse. I know for a fact I’ve helped people there in ways nobody else could or would. I’m not even talking about the job itself. I’m talking about individual human beings that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting while doing the job. The job itself, divorced from the foolishness I witness? I think it’s a good time and I’d be doing it anyway. That’s what happens when you make your hobby a job.

So really, I have no idea what I want to do. HR screwing my wife’s insurance up two months before a major surgery is a huge, huge, problem. Mind you, I don’t blame the HR girl for the error. Rather, I blame the idiot that put her there in the first place. She has no business doing any of that work, so why put her there? Why create an environment so absurd that two HR professionals have left the company in the last 12 months? There’s nothing of value here because these people don’t treat their own company with any care. You can’t waltz into a clean house, trash it, and still expect people to consider it clean. That’s not how this works.

I’m getting my ducks in a row. I need to remove myself from this situation that no longer serves me. Every time I begin to feel like this, something stupid happens and it ruins the economy. I began to think this way right at the start of COVID when the company refused to close. Not out of fear of contracting the virus myself though. The primary demographic of the business matches almost perfectly with the demographic of people COVID was most likely to kill. I’m not stranger to callous disregard but that was too much even for me. I had my resignation letter in my pocket ready to give to my boss when she told me they were closing after all. I shouldn’t have accepted that, but it was the smart move in the long run. Now? I have no idea. The entire world is still a heap of shit six years later. I don’t know whether or not it’s a good idea to continue to hang on. Whatever I do, it needs to be graceful and well thought out.